An Insight Into Plants

An Insight Into Plants, Vols. 1 and 2, by Rajan Sankaran

These guys in Mumbai churn out books of high quality Homeopathy faster than mere mortals like myself can read them. However, I don’t have great homeopaths like Louisa Lera to assist me. Sankaran has used as the basis for this book an important and to be recommend book The Natural Relationship Of Remedies by Jorg Wichmann and Angelika Bolte which lists all remedies from all kingdoms in their natural classification. However, and this is a note of caution while studying both Sankaran and Wichmann, scientists have and are still reclassifying some of the substances. Also, as Wichmann points out, some remedies are hard to classify eg. Angustura and Murex which can be confusing.

Something confusing also about Sankaran’s method is that he sometimes groups together in his study members of one family but where possible takes more generally the families (as opposed to a single family) within a higher order. So for example in the Conifers he found a theme running through all the member families: Taxaceae; Cupressaceae; Pinaceae and Toxodiaceae. At other times when a theme within the higher order cannot be found he takes the members of a particular family eg; Scrophulareae and Solanaceae could come under Scrophulariales but are treated seperately and coincidentally this seems more so in vol.2 and somehow he hasn’t treated the Piper family which should have come under the Magnoliales.

More confusing, though only because so much thought and experience has gone into these two volumes is the incorporation of his theory of miasms. This has the effect of refining his classification further by cross-referencing or matching remedies within each family with his various miasms including his “inbetween” miasms such as Typhoid, Ringworm etc. The result is that you now have a very precise cross-referencing between families and miasms pointing to some of the remedies in each family and the “sensations” they may be used for.

This may sound simple but to complicate it he gives four possible pathological reactions for each family (taking an abbreviated example from the Magnoliaceae);

-the sensation for example “confusion”

-the passive reaction such as “collapse”

-the active reaction eg; “withdrawal” and

-the compensation reaction eg; “easily adaptable”

This all sounds confusing and unnecessarily complicated but he gives us two wonderful tables; the first to list the sensations of each family and the second table is a cross between the various miasms and the families so the relevant remedy can be seen. The result is that remedies not known can be prescribed based on the themes and miasm and more interestingly like the Linda Johnston cases such as her beautiful Nux moschata case, known remedies can be prescribed with our known ideas of remedies, even keynotes, not present (the dryness and drowsiness of Nux.m were absent in her case)

The understanding of the families are backed by many detailed cases, both his own and others, both published and unpublished. The only thing that’s left is for us to apply it.